Romero_Trial_Transcript_8_25_04_53_2

8-25-04 Trial Transcript
5 tell us about that?
6 A. Yeah. Before -- I have to do a little history here, just
7 to --
8 The actual civil war in El Salvador we date to after
9 the murder of -- or at least I date and many others date to
10 after the murder of Archbishop Romero. So the civil war
11 really begins, depending on which date you want to use, the
12 end of 1980 or the beginning of 1981.
13 It goes officially until 1992, when there is a UN
14 negotiated peace agreement that officially ends the war in El
15 Salvador.
16 Q. When was that?
17 A. That was in January of 1992. What happened is that in
18 November 1989, six Jesuit priests were murdered in El
19 Salvador, and the murder of those priests created an enormous
20 foreign policy crisis inside the United States with a lot of
21 pressure to end all military aid coming from inside both
22 political parties of the United States.
23 And it created tremendous pressure on both the right
24 and the left for various reasons to actually begin to
25 negotiate an end of the war.
KARL - D
259
1 So in 1989, right after the murder of those priests,
2 there were a number of secret meetings, which I'm not able to
3 give details about, to -- that we called "talks about talks."
4 And those are the talks about starting what becomes the formal
5 UN peace agreement.
6 So there are lots of informal talks first, the "talks
7 about talks," that lead to the negotiations that start in
8 1990. The negotiations for the peace agreement go from 1990
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